I won a 2-night stay at the Sheraton Hotel & Resorts. But it was restricted to the one about 5 miles from my home. I couldn't think of a time that I would need to stay at a hotel just a bit down the road from my house, so I invited my best friend who lives in another state to visit and gave her and her husband the suite. We both won!

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"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." — Douglas Adams

I think the best auction prize I ever won was a snippet out of the Baltimore phone book...

...and having it read out by a particular actor whose voice we (the fans) had long suspected would make even the phone book sound good.

(Which it did. Ooooh it did.)

I also ought to note that I'm one of those incredibly irritating people who tend to win something in every raffle they buy tickets for, so over the years I've won everything from a very large bottle of scotch (I was seven and under instructions!) to a trip to LA to a set of rubber duckies...

Just out of curiousity, who was it?

Peter Wingfield who was, at the time at least, mostly known for playing Methos on Highlander.

I'm picturing a few slightly dotty ladies at the church where I grew up. (Not that I mean all church ladies are dotty ... oh, you know what I mean.) This could also be a sincerely well-meaning person who simply wanted to do a good thing, had a somewhat confused and impractical idea about how to go about it and then was so worried it would "go to waste" that she kept calling to be sure that it was redeemed. (And when it wasn't, picked it up herself. Maybe even donated it to a shelter or something.)

It doesn't make it right. But it doesn't mean it's a plot, either.

Maybe I just don't want to assume the worst. Naive, perhaps. But I think it's at least as likely as a planned-out scam.[/quote]

This is what I've been thinking all along. I can see my mom in the role of Naive Turkey Lady.

I think the best auction prize I ever won was a snippet out of the Baltimore phone book...

...and having it read out by a particular actor whose voice we (the fans) had long suspected would make even the phone book sound good.

(Which it did. Ooooh it did.)

I also ought to note that I'm one of those incredibly irritating people who tend to win something in every raffle they buy tickets for, so over the years I've won everything from a very large bottle of scotch (I was seven and under instructions!) to a trip to LA to a set of rubber duckies...

Just out of curiousity, who was it?

Peter Wingfield who was, at the time at least, mostly known for playing Methos on Highlander.

The biggest thing I ever won was a year's lease on a new car...of the exact same sort I had bought just a month earlier! Luckily, the raffle was at my workplace yearly picnic, and the big boss's secretary asked him if we could just give the equivalent in car payment money to the exact same place they would have paid for the lease. He said yes, so it ended up being a wonderful prize, more than 1/4 of my car paid off!

Since I was a single 22yo at the time, owning 2 identical vehicles for a year would have been an unpleasant prize. I had even joked to a friend while they were drawing that while I could use everything else being given away, I was therefore sure to win a lease on a twin to the car I had just bought if I won anything. And then they called my number!

Best silent auction item I ever saw: a best-selling writer would put you as a character in their new novel. If you were a librarian named Jane Eyre, for instance, she wrote a scene where her protagonist would have to go to the library for something and would interact with Librarian Jane Eyre.

Technically I didn't win this, but my sister did and we were about 7 and 5 and it ended up being a family prize. The elementary school my sister and I were going to was auctioning off a trans-am kids car. I don't know what they technically are called but it is pretty much a car with a gas and a brake pedal and I think it was electric although it could have been gas powered. It looked like a little trans-am - with the firebird symbol on the hood. It was a cool looking car and my dad gave in and bought each of us a ticket - figuring that the chances of us winning was small but it would mollify us. My sister's ticket won. It was the coolest thing ever. Once we outgrew it we took off the shell and still used it. We would drive it all around the house. Best prize ever.

Best silent auction item I ever saw: a best-selling writer would put you as a character in their new novel. If you were a librarian named Jane Eyre, for instance, she wrote a scene where her protagonist would have to go to the library for something and would interact with Librarian Jane Eyre.

I've heard of auctions like that. The only book I've read where the author did this had several characters named this way. Most were fairly minor, like your librarian example, but one was a recurring character who actually affected the plot. He was also anodious toad of a man with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Apparently the guy he was named after found that delightful, though, so no harm.

I only have one real raffle experience. A colleague and I had to go up to the local high school to try and drum up business for our library. When we saw the awesome HS library we understood why no one bothers to come to us, but we had to try. We had a table in the lunch area, and to draw people in we had a prize wheel. Turns out people really, really like to spin prize wheels.

Most of our prizes were dumb little tchotchkes, bookmarks and buttons and the like. The fake mustaches were very popular, we're definitely getting more of those for when we go back. We tried to be honest with the descriptions of the various prize quadrants - "Something you actually want," "Something you may want," "Something you probably don't want" and "Something you definitely don't want." The definitely don't want kids got a paperclip. We bought colored paperclips, though, so some of the kids actually liked them. The probably don't wants were the tchotchkes, the may wants were advance reader's copies of teen books, and the actually wants were gift cards to the local movie theater. We only had two of those, one for each lunch session. We intended them to be our big draw, but both of them were won within three minutes of the start of the lunch period. Feh.

Whist! Finally made it to the end of the thread! *puff, puff!* Now, I am of the opinion that TL was awfully shady and I know I'd be going to whoever organized the charity auction and the priest to let them both know what happened. I guess it could be a misguided woman who just wanted to make sure it wouldn't go to waste, and since our church is affiliated with a shelter there might be an interest in taking it there, but I'd hope no one would do that!

Though I've only been there since July but based on what I know of the folks that attend, I can see them saying "Hey did you forget to pick this up? Do you still want it? If you're too busy I'll pick it up for you and bring it by your place later!" That and I think at least 25% of our congregation lives in PA so they wouldn't even shop here anyway! LOL!

Logged

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. You have a right to be here. Be cheerful, strive to be happy. -Desiderata

A lot of places will auction off specific epithets, so you can get a new species named after you (or whoever you choose). I believe orchids and cacti are the most expensive. I've named taxa after donors before. (They have to be attractive species - the folks that name dung beetles usually name them after exes, LOL!)

- When I was around 8 I won a Super Mario Bros. Dixie Cup dispenser from a contest on the side of the cup box. I was so excited until I dropped my new silver necklace in it accidentally and my dad had to use a hammer to get it out.

- I've won an extremely popular hobby auction twice with $20 of tickets each time. The prizes (24 each time) are worth around $1000 each and many people drop $500 in the drawing. Many people win with just one ticket which is nice.

- At a conference I attended with my snotty coworker there were free drawings from many of the vendors. CW won a $150 gift card to Target and I was a tad disappointed until I got a call saying I had won a textbook that lists at over $400! It's the size of two dictionaries and THE top resource in its field. A few people tried to get me to sell it to them and I told them to buy it off Amazon since I would never be able to spend that much on one book ever.

I think the best auction prize I ever won was a snippet out of the Baltimore phone book...

...and having it read out by a particular actor whose voice we (the fans) had long suspected would make even the phone book sound good.

(Which it did. Ooooh it did.)

I also ought to note that I'm one of those incredibly irritating people who tend to win something in every raffle they buy tickets for, so over the years I've won everything from a very large bottle of scotch (I was seven and under instructions!) to a trip to LA to a set of rubber duckies...

Just out of curiousity, who was it?

Peter Wingfield who was, at the time at least, mostly known for playing Methos on Highlander.